International Crisis Group

Turkey Finds that Trouble Knows No Bounds | Chatham House

By Hugh Pope, Crisis Group’s Turkey/Cyprus Project Director

As instability undermines the Arab states established in the post-First World War map of the Middle East, a now vigorous Turkey, heir of the Ottoman Empire that was the main loser from that 20th century order, is taking a new look at the region.

‘Those borders are all false’, sniffed one of Turkey’s former top diplomats over dinner in February. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, says that Syria’s growing troubles since 2011 now amount to ‘an internal affair’ for Turkey, while in private officials talk breezily of Syria as ‘our former province’.

In the capital Ankara, a senior security official agreed that tumult in Syria over the past two years had vaporized much of the Cold War frontier of barbed wire and watch-towers. ‘The borders have become meaningless,’ he said.

In short, a major change is under way after decades in which Turkish policy was predicated on making the best of what it found in the Middle East.

FULL ARTICLE (Chatham House)

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